Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the supply and demand of talent are both incredibly high, turning your crew of 2 nerds into 20 isn’t easy.

That being said, it’s not impossible. I love this challenge. And I want to share an approach that’s worked for me.

After years spent helping to build teams, I’ve noticed some clear patterns start to emerge from the questions that get asked during coffee shop conversations. Every developer is a snowflake, but there certainly are some common things that come up again and again.

Specifically, I find that there are the eight things that smart developers are trying to evaluate. My advice – before you sit down, first perform a brutal self-assessment about how your organization and your opportunity measure up on the following:

Fantastic time last night at Santana Row in San Jose with old high school friends Alex and Marco. Haven’t seen these guys in a long time.

In a crowded outdoor setting, it’s easy to feel like an idiot for pulling out the big DSLR + flash. But there are still some moments in your life when you should leave the iPhone in your pocket and use the real deal instead.

At the ASOT 500 celebration in Buenos Aires last night, trance/progressive superstar Markus Schulz played a brand new track called Rotunda. “Rotunda” is a collaboration between Markus and fellow trance producer Jochen Miller.

With those two guys hooking up, you pretty much knew it was going to be a banger. Sure enough, it is. Markus + Jochen have delivered, big time. The crowd of 10,000 in Buenos Aires ate it up. And I’m eating it up, too. Classic 2011 trance anthem. Huge lead synth, fun little stabs and plucks here and there, and — naturally — a great build and climax.

The juicy part here, though, is the social media angle of this. Thanks to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, electronic dance music fans were able to watch the creation happen in realtime and help shape what it eventually became.